By PAUL HUGHES
I don’t know how to surf.
I was thinking about this recently because we’re well into high season for beachgoers, while surfing season, as far as I can tell, is year-round. As we move like lemmings into the lovely water and with the touristas coming in droves, I have a suggestion.
Segregation.
Now hear me out on this. I’m willing to be the one in the enclave,the surfers can surround us, taking Huntington Beach plus Trestles southward, nigh unto San Diego (though once you cross the county line, you’re on your own).
Swimmers get most or all the rest: Laguna Beach, Little Corona, Newport and the like.
Maybe over time we could all just get along and coexist. But right now this is for the best.
It’s an imperfect plan, I admit. I can hear Newport surfers already fomenting a rebellion. There will be squawking on both sides.
My plan may need a tweak or two. I’m open to some kind of permit system allowing minimal travel between the two lands, maybe based on time of day? At least we could raise some money for Bolsa Chica and beach cleanup.
But fundamentally, this is a good move: reducing friction between the two parties, while making beach use orderly and efficient.
In fact, segregation often has made sense, not the forced kind, but rather the natural sort, as ethnically similar groups move to an area and write home to extol the virtues of their place.
In our case, it’s particular parts of Orange County. They write to Mexico, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy and even Africa, and family and friends join them. Little Italy, Chinatown, Garden Grove, Anaheim’s Little Gaza all are distinct, and not least in color.
Even white folks congregate in Newport Coast, Laguna Beach and elsewhere on the coast, creating mini Caucasian hubs that become “The O.C.” to the world.
Last year some beach segregation happened without a plan.
My family mistakenly assumed San Clemente beaches allowed intermixing of surfers and swimmers, and soon learned this isn’t the case.
“Swimmers and body boarders we have set a spot for you away from the surfers. Please respect that,” a lifeguard bullhorned to us from his Jeep.
We repatriated 100 yards south.
The lifeguard did not say, “Surfers, we have a spot for you, away from most beachgoers. While swimmers make way, be careful of them.”
Neither did they post signs so anyone with small children would know not to unpack all their gear, requiring multiple trips following expulsion orders, as in the end of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Doing this would have been easy. And doing so would have made sense,like natural segregation.
As Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell has shown, self-segregation in neighborhoods and cities happens naturally, with good reason,and with good results. So zinc-nosed youth in board shorts and sunburned pinking fathers or not, it will happen. Let’s make it orderly.
In both camps, also, are the ignorant and merely angry: Swimmers are notable doofuses about surf etiquette, and surfers ride identical sticks of wood until a sufficient number at one time decide a wave is worth it, then all stand on the sticks until they hit land. This is called free-thinking.
Maybe tourist swimmers and families carting living rooms to the beach to plop them under huge gaudy umbrellas really shouldn’t be allowed near the beautiful people of OC anyway.
That’s just my point. Instead of drawing a line in the ocean, let’s draw it in the sand. Sure, one little kid bonked by a board would do more than any law can to keep us safe, as highway fatalities went down when people shot at each other on the freeway. But if we save even one tourist, won’t it be worth a little inconvenience?
Actually, I was thinking about this for another reason. My two teens are learning how to surf. People intermarry, too, I hear. My plan still works. Pretty soon they’ll want to go to the beach without me, anyway.
